Chennai/New Delhi: The row over the sharing of Cauvery water is set to escalate further after the Tamil Nadu government filed a contempt petition against Karnataka government in the Supreme Court on Wednesday.

The Jayalalithaa government decided to file a contempt petition “immediately” after the Karnataka government stopped the release of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu. The Jayalalithaa government said Karnataka’s action amounted to impeding country’s federal structure.

The TN government has termed the unilateral decision by the Karnataka government to as dishonour of the Supreme Court verdict and said the petition is aimed to ensure that Tamil Nadu gets its due share of water.

Karnataka had on Monday night stopped release of water from the Krishna Raja Sagar Dam citing low storage in the reservoir; hours after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made it clear that only the Cauvery River Authority (CRA) can review its order directing the state to release 9,000 cusecs to Tamil Nadu.

The apex court had earlier endorsed the CRA ruling asking the upper riparian state to release 9000 cusecs from September 20-October 15, a decision contested by both states, locked in the decades-long Cauvery dispute.

Karnataka has been requesting the CRA to stay its 19 September order asking the state to release 9,000 cusecs of water to Tamil Nadu daily till 15 October and keep it in abeyance till the decision was subjected to review.

The Cauvery Monitoring Committee is expected to meet in Delhi on October 11 during which the reports of the two central study teams that visited both the states are likely to be debated.